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Thursday, November 27, 2014

New Zealand trip diary - day 11

Last night we
took a cab back to the Court Theatre, which is a great facility despite being
located in a warehouse, and we saw the play One
Man, Two Guvnors. This was big in London and New York a few years ago, and
even won a Tony for best actor, but as far as I know has yet to be produced in
Toronto. It’s a flat-out farce, driven by sheer silliness and dexterity, and
works very well as such, although if I were the director, I would have been
pushing the cast to work even faster. There’s a certain amount of picking on
the audience, and at one point the lead actor targeted me in the audience (we
were in the second row) and asked me where he should take the object of his
desire on a first date. Despite being new in town, I shot back Tequila
Mockingbird, which seemed to be a fine answer and earned a smattering of
audience applause (of course the character rejects that suggestion, over his
object of desire’s objections, and the play grinds on). This was an especially
high stakes moment for me as the previous audience participant ended up covered
in fire extinguisher foam (it’s confirmed later, for anyone who wasn’t
sure, that she was actually a plant).

Pure and Deep in Auckland was a tight, minimalist, contemporary
show, and this was basically the opposite, making for a fine counterpoint. We took a cab
to the St. Asaph Street Kitchen (I was born in St. Asaph, a different one
obviously) where despite the “…till late” thing, the guy had to check that the
restaurant staff were still able to make us a meal; fortunately, they were.
Then we walked back maybe eight blocks to the hotel, and although I’ve made
this point several times by now, it’s still eerily remarkable that you can walk
that far through a world-famous city (one of the year’s top travel
destinations per several sources) and see no
one else walking, not on the other side of the street, not anywhere (we did
see one cat), and virtually no traffic. We kept registering new sights – a row
of storefronts where a hairdresser seems to be open for business, just a few doors down from
another that’s still a wreck, still with an almost four-year-old notice on the
door inviting applicants for positions. This is something we’ll truly never
forget.

“Climb aboard one of the world’s most famous train journeys,” says the
blurb for the KiwiRail TranzApline railway, “between Christchurch and
Greymouth. Cross the fertile farmlands of the Canterbury Plains, and enjoy
thrilling vistas over deep gorges as you travel alongside the ice-fed
Waimakariri River. Traverse the mighty Southern Alps, where spectacular views
of the chiselled alpine landscape will take your breath away at every turn. Descend through thick stands of native beech forest
to your destination, Greymouth – a great base for exploring this unspoiled region
with its mighty glaciers, wild rivers and famous Punakaiki pancake.” We didn’t
do the last couple of sentences – we caught the train at 8.15 am and got off a
couple of hours later, not quite halfway through the journey, at the tiny station of Cass – the only passengers to do
so (to the apparent bemusement of some of the others). The journey is indeed
spectacular at times, but the train was packed and noisy (unfortunately we were
sitting right behind a group of American seniors, and you know what that means)
and the carriage which is open for better viewing was full of people
with selfie sticks.

We were picked up and driven to the Grasmere Lodge,
a couple of miles from Cass, where we’re spending our last two nights. Since
we couldn’t check in, we embarked pretty soon on a two and a half hour walk
down to the nearby Grasmere lake, where we followed the trails for a while
before sitting on a hillside and surveying the astonishing landscape. At one
point I counted at least seven layers to the landscape – the sky, two mountain ranges
(one with snow, one without), a row of trees, the lake with a grass frame on either side, and the yellow brush flowers in the foreground.
Even the world’s most beautiful landscapes might ordinarily be content to constitute,
say, four stunning layers.

During the walk, we attracted the attention of a
herd of cows on the other side of the wire, and they all followed us for a vast
distance, bunching together so that you’d seriously fear for your safety if you were
caught in the middle (see for yourself!) When we came back though, many of the
cows had entirely disappeared from view, reminding us of the African safari
where animals might roam vast distances. In the beef-rearing run of things,
those are some pretty lucky cows. We also attracted the attention of a lamb who
very loudly tracked us for as far as he could, and then did the same on the
way back. We later learned that his name is Marcus (doesn’t it seem like every
damn sheep nowadays is called Marcus though?) and that he’s spent too much time
around humans; they’re trying to reintegrate him with the other sheep, but it’s
not really working. We thought of offering to take Marcus home as a nice friend
for Ozu, but I guess Ozu might not be entirely sympathetic to the idea.

We had lunch, and then the owner took us and
another couple (from Christchurch, so that was an inevitable conversation topic) on a drive of the property and the surrounding area, which I’ll
summarize basically as saying that three or four local landowners appear to own the
equivalent of Toronto (but of course with a miniscule fraction of the
population). Although Cass apparently has only one resident, it has a mini-golf
range, and an annual cricket tournament/booze-up for which a few hundred people
show up and camp – it’s happening tomorrow, so the formation of the camp is fairly well
advanced. Our room, which has little in common with the Cass campsite, is enormous (we got an upgrade!), with a gas fireplace and
terrific chairs (and a mini bar we can empty out for no extra charge, if so inclined) and
for Friday night we’re the only guests in the whole place (the Christchurch couple
were on the way home), by ourselves at the far end of a very long lodge, separate from the
main building. So we just have to hope one of us doesn’t go nuts in the manner
of The Shining.